All Features
(ETQ: Burlington, MA) -- ETQ, part of Hexagon, has appointed John Taylor, its former senior vice president of engineering and operations, to chief technology officer (CTO), effective immediately. In this new role, Taylor will be responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of ETQ Reliance,…
(Waygate Technologies: Huerth, Germany) – Waygate Technologies, a Baker Hughes business and world leader in nondestructive testing (NDT) solutions for industrial inspection, introduces Krautkrämer SpotVision, a new phased array ultrasonic solution for spot weld inspection.
Krautkrämer SpotVision…

Morris Cohen
Billions in federal spending to boost production of computer chips is an important step toward making the U.S. more competitive in the global marketplace. But it doesn’t guarantee that a manufacturing boom will follow, says Wharton expert Michael Cohen.
“I think it will have an incremental effect…

Harry Hertz
In a recent blog of mine about CEO challenges and opportunities in 2022, the first opportunity listed was to determine how to make a difference.
As stated, employees, customers, and investors want to associate with organizations that serve a larger purpose (emphasis added) than may be expressed in…
(Mahr Inc.: Providence, RI) -- Mahr Inc., a leading provider of dimensional metrology solutions, has launched MarSurf CD 140 AG 11, a new machine that enables fast and precise contour measurements. Its unique, intelligent probe system has a 350 mm arm, a measuring range of up to 70 mm, and a…
NIST
NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has made five awards totaling nearly $500,000 to support standards education in undergraduate and graduate curricula. The disciplines supported by this year’s awards include…

Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Every company wants to succeed, but not all can say they meet the current requirements to do that. More than a focus on capital, business plans, or staff, a successful business in 2022 must operate digitally. Yet for the 45 percent of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that still rely on…

David Isaacson
In 1982, when asked about the state of the company’s Xenix operating system, a Microsoft engineer reportedly called it “vaporware“ to indicate that the operating system had really not yet materialized. Unfortunately, the term stuck for this and many other premature software launches.
It’s not only…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- For airliners, cargo ships, nuclear power plants, and other critical technologies, strength and durability are essential. This is why many contain a remarkably strong and corrosion-resistant alloy called 17-4 precipitation hardening (PH) stainless steel. Now, for the…

Laurie Flynn
AStanford Medicine-led study has found that borrowing certain billing- and insurance-related procedures from other countries could lead to policies that drastically lower healthcare costs in the U.S.
The new study, published in the August edition of Health Affairs, compares costs of healthcare…

Nilanjana Dasgupta
Jen, a student I taught early in my career, stood head-and-shoulders above her peers academically. I learned she had started off as an engineering major but switched over to psychology. I was surprised and curious.
Was she struggling with difficult classes? No. In fact, Jen’s aptitude for math was…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL: Oak Ridge, TN) -- When Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in 2017, winds snapped trees and destroyed homes while heavy rains transformed streets into rivers. But after the storm passed, the human toll continued to grow as residents struggled without electricity for months. Five years later…
(168 Manufacturing: Brainerd, MN) -- In mid-September, 168 Manufacturing, a developer of CNC machine shop automation technologies, debuted its FullShop Automated Coolant Management System at the International Manufacturing Technology Show at McCormick Center in Chicago.
FullShop systems, which…

Matthias Gouthier
The ISO Foresight Trend Report highlights global trends across multiple industries that will shape strategic decision making for a better future. Drawing upon these insights, ISO reflects on some of the potential areas for standardization work. In a series of feature articles, we unpack some of the…

Leon Chao
I am 100 percent a millennial (lol), which—according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary—means I’m a “person born in the 1980s or 1990s.” To me, being a millennial means belonging to a cultlike group within a large population of present-day wannabe-adults for whom seemingly arbitrary words like…

Angie Basiouny
When Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell first came to the U.S. from England in the 1990s, he was struck by the dogged American work ethic.
“It was a culture that was much more organized around work than in the UK,” he recalls. “When I was growing up, there wasn’t quite the same heroism…

Claire Zulkey
A boss who overloads you with information may be frustrating, but one who leaves you in the dark may come off as uncaring.
That’s the key finding from a new study that examines how employees perceive managers who assume that less is more when it comes to communicating at work.
After reviewing…

Ho-Yin Mak, Christopher Tang, Tinglong Dai
Two recent electrifying moves have the potential to ignite electric vehicle demand in the United States. First, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, expanding federal tax rebates for EV purchases. Then California approved rules to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
The…
(New Scale Robotics: Victor, NY) -- New Scale Robotics highlighted its Q-Span Automated Gauging System at IMTS this year. The Q-Span Workstation incorporates existing manual gauges and gauging techniques to automate QC inspection in high-mix, small-batch manufacturing.
A collaborative robot from…

Donald J. Wheeler
Last month we found that capability and performance indexes have no inherent preference for one probability model over another. However, whenever we seek to convert these indexes into fractions of nonconforming product, we have to make use of some probability model. Here, we’ll look at the role…

John Logan
Labor Day 2022 came smack-bang in the middle of what is increasingly looking like a pivotal year in the history of American unions.
The summer saw a steady stream of workforce mobilizations. Employees at Trader Joe’s locations in Massachusetts and Minneapolis both voted to unionize. Meanwhile,…
Alessandro du Besse'
(Tyre Collective: London) -- While you drive, your tires wear and leave dangerous microplastic around. The Tyre Collective is a startup launched with a mission to capture and monitor plastic pollution from tires, accelerating the shift toward zero-emission mobility.
Even on electric or hydrogen-…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Oak Ridge, TN) -- Researchers at the Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville discovered a key material needed for fast-charging lithium-ion batteries. The commercially relevant approach opens a potential pathway to…

Libby Sander
Telstra and Westpac are the latest companies to encourage staff to work from home, just a few months after some of them returned to the office. However, working from home for extended periods can leave employees feeling socially and professionally isolated. When people work from home, they have…

Vanessa Bates Ramirez
Most people older than 30 probably remember doing research with good old-fashioned encyclopedias. You’d pull a heavy volume from the shelf, check the index for your topic of interest, then flip to the appropriate page and start reading. It wasn’t as easy as typing a few words into the Google search…